Steuart Pittman, Anne Arundel County’s incumbent Democratic County Executive, is locked in a competitive race with first-term Republican County Councilmember Jessica Haire. It’s in contrast to races statewide where Democrats are poised to win their races, polls show. Dan Nataf, who runs the Center for the Study of Local Issues at Anne Arundel Community College, said the race had the reverse image of the one four years ago.
In Democrat Pittman’s first run for office he pulled out a close victory. Meanwhile, at the top of the statewide ticket incumbent Republican Gov. Larry Hogan had a commanding lead.
Now, Wes Moore, the Democratic nominee for governor, holds a 20-to-30-point lead over Frederick County Del. Dan Cox, his Republican challenger. But Nataf said he’s not sure what that means for the GOP opponent in Anne Arundel.
Instead, expects “a kind of reliable Republican turnout,” but that it’s “hard to anticipate the level of enthusiasm, motivation on the Democratic side,” he said.
It’s unclear whether Democrats see this as an opportunity to “send a message to MAGA Republicans” and turnout in droves or “just another mid-term election,” he said.
Democrats might even “get kind of nonchalant about the whole thing, because they figure, you know, Wes Moore is going to beat Cox without breaking a sweat,” he said. “So, do I really need to come out?”
Nataf’s poll, released last week, showed Haire with a two-point lead, well within the margin of error.
For her part, Haire, who was courting voters at a recent Republican meet and greet, avoids the Donald Trump, MAGA culture war issues to focus on school buses, taxes, public safety and what she calls wasteful spending.
“Local government is where we make sure your trash gets picked up on time and your kids get to school on buses on time,” she reasoned. “You know, we're making sure that your taxes are as low as possible, so you can keep your hard-earned money.”
Citing a recent Annapolis Capital report that county students had missed more than 3,100 days of school since the beginning of this semester, she blamed Pittman in a press release for failures to solve the school bus driver shortage, which is also a national problem.
Pittman pushed a $5 an hour raise as well as signing and retention bonuses in an effort to attract and keep drivers.
“I could just say that it would be a whole lot worse had we not got that $5 an hour increase that all of the bus driving companies had asked for and the drivers that she voted against doing,” he said.
Haire countered that he should have done more, arguing that leadership “involves more than throwing money at a problem.”
“What he needed to do was partner with the board and the superintendent to do things, like work on rolling outages, or find alternative means, like vans for shorter routes, so that we have drivers who don't need a CDL license,” she said.
The day after she issued that press release, county School Superintendent Mark Bedell, who took office in July, announced a series of changes that would add service on 40 bus routes and increase other routes to full service. Pittman said his workforce development office had been working with school officials to ease the problem and that he had personally lobbied the county school board.
“That’s the kind of outside the box thinking that, you know, I've been pushing for a year,” he said. We've got a superintendent ready to work with us, and what we don't need is people making political hay out of a community crisis.”
He said the numbers have improved recently, though they aren’t completely staffed yet.
In his first year in office, Pittman pushed increases in the county’s “piggyback” income tax and property tax rates through the county council with Haire voting against them. Pittman has said they were necessary to catch up with the county’s burgeoning growth and to give police, firefighters and teachers raises. Haire says he’s “blowing a lot of smoke.”
“He talks about adding police officers,” she said. “Do you know, he only added 18 sworn officers to the budget over the last four years?” Eighteen! The prior administration added 54. And they did it without raising taxes.”
A county police spokesman says there were 725 officers on the force the year before Pittman took office and now there are 756.
Pittman says the tax increases led to a budget surplus that has allowed him to begin reducing taxes, the county’s first Triple A bond rating from Moody’s Investor Services and provided the money to give police, firefighters and teachers raises to keep them from fleeing to other counties.
“She says she's going to cut the taxes so much that she won't be able to afford the police,” he said. “So, they're all wondering who gets the pink slip.”
He noted that the police, firefighters and teachers’ unions all have endorsed him.
